Laid Back Laos

We arrived in the city of Luang Prabang with limited time due to our side trip to Cambodia and were ready to hustle to see all the sites of Laos. Turns out that one week is plenty for this very laid back country for what we wanted to encounter.

Luang Prabang is another UNESCO World Heritage site and is considered to be Asia's best preserved city. However, with preservation comes little change and subsequently not a whole lot to do. Laos is a very Buddhist nation with Luang Prabang itself having 65 monasteries, dozens of temples, caves setup as temples and a Royal Palace with a temple. We have seen so many temples within the last month that Elyssa put it best when she said "I am templed and Royal Palaced out!". Our days were spent walking the town and renting bicycles in 40 degree heat but we did manage to find the only public pool in town on our last day. El and Jake also donated some time to a local literacy program called Big Brother Mouse that donates books throughout the country and also teaches the locals how to read english, the girls had a lot of fun and locals loved having El help them with their children's books and had lots of questions for her. Luang Prabang also has a fantastic night market where we were able to have supper, shop for clothing and handicrafts and share a street dessert on the way home. Our night market finds have also justified another box being shipped home by way of sea mail.

Our next stop would be the capital city of Vientiane since we made a conscious decision to avoid Vang Vieng which is a huge backpacker party town. Although it is only 300kms or so the road is very twisty due to the mountainous terrain and buses are limited to 30km/hr which turns this trip into 11 or so hours. We have also heard that due to these roads they hand out "road sick" bags and have an attendant on board to collect them. Therefore, taking El's weak stomach into account we opted to spend the extra $50 each and catch the 45 minute flight to the capital. Sometimes sanity has a price!

Upon our bouncy arrival to Vientiane we found it to be like the rest of Laos being very quiet and full of Buddhist temples. With our temporary moratorium on temples we didn't have much else to do but did make it to a museum/prosthetic center that is based around post US-Vietnam War injuries. Much like Cambodia, Laos was severely bombed during the war and is actually the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world as a result of the US trying to drive the VC back into Vietnam and off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. During the war, the US dropped 260 million cluster bombs on Laos compared to 26 million in Cambodia and 97 million in Vietnam. Cluster bombs were used to inflict maximum damage over a larger area by releasing up to 600 smaller bombs or bombies that detonate on impact releasing shrapnel with the intent to kill and maim. However, these cluster bombs had roughly a 30% rate of nondetonation and now act as land mines throughout Laos with an estimated 13 -78 million live bombies littering the country potentially ready to detonate if struck. Each year injuries and deaths occur due to day to day life and the collection of metal for recycling which rural children partake in to earn money for their families. Many of these injuries cause loss of limbs for families that can barely afford life's daily costs so this organization offers free prosthetics, physiotherapy and rehab services to the unfortunate (www.copelaos.org - check out the video and ban cluster bomb section). With not much else to do in town we headed out to find another pool, after a miscommunication at a 5 star hotel and getting politely escorted out, not before the kids got a quick dip, we did find a public swimming pool to hide from the heat and kill some time.

Laos is a quiet country with a friendly but very shy population unlike the other countries in the region. However, once you break the ice they are all smiles but the language barrier here is a bit more of an issue most likely due to a lesser amount of tourism.

We are now off to Bangkok and our month in Thailand so it should much more fast paced again which we are all looking forward to. Bye for now!